Computers and other electronic devices have revolutionized the practice of medicine in many hospitals.
For example, some hospitals feature computer workstations installed at many patient bedsides and nursing stations. These workstations sometimes utilize automated sensors, which are coupled to the workstations to provide continuous streams of electronic data regarding a patient's condition. This enables a nurse or hospital technician to display various types of data side-by-side for review, and also to periodically store the data as an electronic "chart," or as part of a permanent electronic record. For example, these systems may be connected to automatic sensors that measure levels of certain elements of a patient's blood, such as oxygen saturation. Other sensors that have been connected to these automatic computer monitoring systems include urimeters, respiratory sensors, heartbeat sensors, as well as other sensors.
Computer workstations of the type just described sometimes operate by receiving continuous data, which a nurse or technician may selectively sample and store in the patient's chart. For example, one typical mode of employing this equipment would be for the nurse to sample the continuous data representing the patient approximately every hour and cause the data to be entered permanently on the patient's electronic chart. When a physician responsible for the patient's care then reviews a hard-copy print-out of this chart, or reviews it on the workstation's display screen, the physician may issue appropriate orders relating to the patient's care.
Of course, electronic "beepers" and paging systems have also played an important role in medical care. They permit a nurse or other medical assistant to request that the physician immediately check-in with the nurse in response to an immediate patient condition. Recently, these "beepers" and paging systems have provided alphanumeric display capability using a liquid crystal display screen of the physician's beeper. Accordingly, a nurse can use a paging network to send the physician a message requesting a response from the physician. These paging systems are relatively easy to operate and may be sometimes operated directly from a nurse's workstation, e.g., by manually formatting an alphanumeric message and sending that message as an electronic mail message to a paging network. For example, a commercially-available system called "Starlink" permits a nurse or other person to type in a message using a computer keyboard, and send that message to a remote pager using a modem. The "Starlink" system provides a paging facility which receives this modem communication along with identifying information for the particular physician, which is looked up by the nurse and included as part of the modem transmission, and causes the alphameric message sent by the nurse to be transmitted to the particular physician's pager.
Computers and other electronic equipment such as those specific systems mentioned above have gone far to improve the quality and nature of medical care, but they still rely on significant human interaction if they are to function correctly. For example, there are occasions when a critical or sensitive condition of the patient will go unnoticed by a nurse or hospital technician, and not be reported to the physician. Other times, specific orders relating to a patient's symptoms may be issued for a patient, but due to a change in staff workshift, the condition might not always be properly recognized or properly reported to the physician. Lastly, sometimes the physician is diverted from attending to another patient, because hospital staff page the physician regarding mundane matters.
There is therefore an urgent need in the art for a system that automatically notifies a physician in response to predetermined events. Preferably, systems of this type would not be needed on an individual basis for each particular patient; rather, a need exists for a system capable of monitoring many patients, ascertaining the presence of critical or sensitive events should they occur, and automatically determining the identity of the physician or physicians to be notified of the condition. Finally, a need exists for a system that reviews many physical parameters to determine the existence of complex conditions, e.g., a bradycardia which persists beyond a defined length of time. The present invention solves these needs and provides many further related advantages.